5 Reasons Why Zombies Would Fail at Causing Apocalypse​

In 1998, an asteroid was coming to kill us. Then, Michael Bay and Bruce Willis kicked its ass (while some other, crappy, knock-off asteroid just decided not to kill us because it liked Elijah Wood too much). The next year, The Matrix (and hair-devouring, “malfunctioning” Furbys) made sure that machines were coming to kill us. When the Matrix trilogy ended, it was nature that was coming to kill us in movies like the temporary hit The Day After Tomorrow, and the never-watched-by-anyone The Core. More recently, the Twilight films had vampires coming to… uh, well, I guess cuddle us and sparkle and try really hard not to eat us, so I guess they don’t count. Finally, we’re at the age of zombies, and, briefly, fake Mayans who’s apocalypse wasn’t even interesting enough for it’s own movie. Oh, wait, no, 2012, sorry. Anyway, now that the Mayans didn’t show (probably because they’re all dead), we’ve defaulted back to zombies (fine, maybe Mayan zombies), and it’s up to zombies to wipe out all human life as we know it, because apparently, something has to. Unfortunately for the apocalypse, zombies are a really shitty choice, and you will soon see why. But before you do, it’s time again to look at the fail criteria that didn’t make the list. Well, this time around, there’s only one, actually, I pretty much covered all my fail bases on this one. So here it is: Zombies are a Made-Up Amalgam of Human Fears That Can’t Possibly Happen. And to tell the truth, the only reason it’s not on the list is because it pretty much is the whole list in summary, and could very well be the title of this list if you add the words, “And Here’s Why,” to the end, like this:

Zombies are a Made-Up Amalgam of Human Fears That Can’t Possibly Happen, And Here’s Why:

5. Living People are Smarter Than Dead Ones

A horde of zombies may be overwhelming, but only if you’re stupid. Well, okay… only if you’re stupid or you let the sight of rotting, reanimated corpses paralyze you with fear. For most of you, this will happen a lot during the early stages of an earth-wide zombie takeover. And then, that same most of you will probably be gnawed and trampled into painful, disfiguring death and/or zombiedom. But let’s fast forward past the part where time and nature has weeded several of you out by the element of surprise to the part where this has been going on for a while. By this time, the zombie virus is common knowledge and you’ve already had to shoot a zombified best friend or parental unit in the head. Not being stupid is now your second greatest weapon.​ Even better, your greatest weapon is zombie stupidity itself! I’ll try not to spend too much time on this point since the rest of my list is almost entirely dependent on this one principle. And while on basic principles, let’s get one thing straight: there are almost no useful things a zombie can do that living humans can’t, and many things a living human can do that zombies can't. So dealing with zombies isn’t much different than how you deal with stupid people on a regular basis, except the stakes are a little higher and you actually get to shoot these people in the head instead of just impotently dreaming as such. If you stop and think about it, zombies really only have one asset: numbers. On it’s own, what’s a zombie got going for it except a terrifying ugliness? Single a zombie out and fighting it isn’t much different than fighting a crippled, autistic leper, except morally speaking, of course. Now, imagine there’s an army of them (which there wouldn’t be, because zombies aren’t smart enough to organize one). Though a little more daunting, they’re still mentally AND physically handicapped. If the idea still intimidates you… well, first of all, you may want to consult your physician as you have an unhealthy perception of reality and at least a borderline anxiety disorder. Then, think of all the things you can do and they can’t. Can you outrun them? Yes. Can you climb trees and swim? Yes. Can they? No. Can they avoid trip wires, ever? No. Can they deter birds, insects and other scavengers? No. Can they avoid speeding trucks? Put out fires? Unlock steel doors? No, no and no. Can they walk if their shoelaces are tied together? No. And it’s at this point that living mankind will stupidly realize that his zombie apocalypse doesn’t have to be all blood, guts, horror and no play, and with society temporarily broken down from zombie chaos and no one to keep our own stupidity in check… well, let’s just say we’re gonna have a lot of zombies slipping on banana peels and stepping on unsafely-positioned rakes.

Furthermore, I’ve assembled a sort of pros and cons list to outline the absurdity of a full-scale zombie-uprising’s underpoweredness (and overall inability to wipe us out), and if die-hard zombie enthusiasts don’t hate me for this, then consider this work a vanity. Here are each of the benefits of being a zombie and why none of them are very good. Zombie fans, you’ve been asking for this for a long, long time:

Zombie Mob.

“Benefits”:

Erosion.

Stupid or not, enough morons pushing in the same spot will still knock down a wall, especially if they have no sense of pain. Unless, that is, you choose to hole up somewhere with walls that can’t be knocked over by pushing. And that’s me skipping ahead in the list.

Not-Very-Highly Contagious.

The zombie virus is contagious, but only if you get close enough to touch them. So, you know, don’t do that. And that’s me skipping ahead in the list, again.

Sort-of-Invincibility.

Only brain-trauma and decapitation can kill them, which is not only easy for human zombie-hunters to manage, but nature on its own could figure it out without too much trouble. And skipping ahead, again.

Disadvantages:Everything.

…And That’s It.

Yeah, that’s all they’ve got, really. And more surprisingly, considering my typical long-windedness, that’s all I’ve got. That’s right, zombies are dumb and have so little going for them, they might just stupid themselves back to death on their own without any help from us at all. Well, that was shorter than I expected, and mostly because I realized that the rest of what I was going to write in this mini-list, as well as what I have written so far, is what the rest of this article was going to be about, anyway. So really I just spoiled my main list by writing it twice… Oh boy, this wasn’t planned well at all…

4. There are Plenty of Places to Live Where Zombies Can’t

It’s amazing how often zombie theory is thwarted by thinking, so let’s do it again! Think about it: we already coexist with thousands of other species that outnumber us, like, 1,000,000 to 1, and most of them are bugs we don’t like. Truly, zombies are not that much different than ants, except that they’re human-sized and eat people, not cheerios. But the principle remains the same: after a long enough time, we stone-wielding cavemen (and cavewomen) became smart enough to concoct a cadre of elaborate traps and baits and deterrents all to keep our food stores safe from the evil armies of the ant-menace simply because we were kind of annoyed with them. Sure, our anti-ant strategies aren’t foolproof, but I think if ants were as big as people and had rotting corpse-faces and shrieked like an inside-out dinosaur upon approach, we might be a little more diligent in dealing with them. Case in point: ants cant get in the fridge. And neither can zombies. I’m pretty sure if you’re locked behind a big metal door in a big metal room (such as an actual, walk-in fridge), zombies can’t get you. Of course you’d starve to death unless you try to leave back out through the zombie door, but you see my point, right? We’re just a little bit of zombiepocalypse-flavored troubleshooting away from figuring this out. But seriously, humans have survived places and conditions where, logically, no human should be able to, including underwater, outer space, and even in a country led by Barak Obama. Humans shouldn’t be able to breathe underwater or survive the crushing weight of the water 1,000s of feet below the surface, but the Navy does it all the time in zombie-proof submarines. We shouldn’t even be able to reach outer space, but at least 2 nations that I know of have spent billions of tax dollars just so that a handful of their citizens could go camping up there. True, no one’s probably going to be successful breaking into the old NASA shuttle hangars to try and hijack the secret Armageddon rocket, the “Michael Bay 1”, just to flee into space and starve to death (or, realistically, explode on take-off). But you can bet, when the zombie virus hits us, there will be a fair share of very-safe submariners who horded up on extra rations and probably just won’t surface for a while, or at least stay a safe distance from shore.

And by the way, that last part was mainly just to illustrate the spectacular, elaborate places we can survive in and the convoluted means of survival we are capable of. Now lets try some that are a little more obvious. And let me remind you, that these are places that real people in our real world live their normal everyday lives, raising children, eating cheeseburgers and working at Target. First, the desert. People, right now, are living in the desert, potentially reading this article. They are a strange and thirsty people, but they are people nonetheless. And most importantly, they are alive. A zombie in the desert, on the other hand, without our human ability to open a bottle of water, would quickly dry up. All their tissues would become hardened and immobile, and they would basically turn into useless zombie jerky in a mere matter of hours. The second obvious place is anywhere with normal temperatures of below freezing, such as Greenland or parts of Alaska. Some dedicated scientists even live in Antarctica for temporary periods of time for particular studies, like The Effect of Extreme Cold on Cyano Bacteria or The Amount of Time it Takes a Zombie Pandemic to Kill Itself Off While I Wait Safely in Antarctica. Without our human ability to generate body heat or sit in the car with the heater on, any zombie that steps outdoors will soon become a frozen-solid zombicle. In such conditions as these, a zombie outbreak could very well have happened already, but was so ineffective, we just never found out about it and chalked it up as death from exposure.

Besides, all clever segues and writing-devices aside, we have armed castles and fortresses in places in this world that are already effective at deterring competent armies, end of story. Sorry, I jumped ahead there a little bit. I couldn’t help it, the next one’s my favorite, it’s so obvious: ​